In 1919, John Barton Payne made a gift of artworks to the Commonwealth of Virginia. His vision: a public art museum that could educate and unite a disparate people. A hundred years on, VMFA has emerged a leading repository of great world art. That success is due to the passion and persistence of a century of patrons who, on the example of Payne, have collected, donated, bequeathed, and financed more than 35,000 works for the benefit of the people. Highlighting VMFA’s most transformational donors with representative selections from its diverse holdings, Collecting for the Commonwealth is a celebration of Payne’s legacy and its underscored belief in art as a medium of humanity.
